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Saturday, October 31, 2015

About
four years back, India's leading techno legal ICT law firm Perry4Law
wrote about cyber
security legal practice in
India. The article was very clear in its message that techno legal
fields like cyber law, cyber security, cyber forensics, cyber
warfare, cyber terrorism, etc are not the preferred field of legal
practice for law firms and lawyers in India and other countries. The
main reason for avoiding cyber security legal practice was lack of
expertise to manage complicated cyber security related issues. Only
law firms like Perry4Law have been managing
techno legal issues of cyber security, cyber law, cyber forensics,
e-discovery, etc in India so far.

Then came the positive development and lawyers and law firms
started
exploring the areas like
cyber law, cyber security, cyber forensics, etc. Although the number
of such lawyers/law firms is negligible yet the growing interest in
the techno legal fields would increase
such numbers in future. Further, techno legal issues would also
change the way traditional businesses and transactions would be
carried out in future. For instance concepts like cyber
insurance, online dispute
resolution, e-courts, digital evidencing and e-discovery, media
forensics, cyber forensics, etc would be very much used in future.

However, technology laws have their own peculiar problems. Cyber
laws are generally curative in nature as against the desirable
preventive requirements. They are formulated keeping in mind the
crimes/cyber crimes that have already taken place instead of what
cyber crimes can possibly happen in future. In short, cyber laws must
be “futuristic” in nature as against “historical” in their
applicability. This brings novel legal challenges before lawyers and
law firms as cyber security legal practice becomes very challenging
and research oriented field.

With issues like cyber espionage and cyber warfare, the
traditional armed forces and legal fraternity are now collaborating
upon a very unique platform where lawyers need to have a sound
knowledge of both law and technology. It seems the techno legal
community alone would be able to dare to explore issues like cyber
law, cyber security, etc in future.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Anybody who has dealt with international cyber law and cyber security
related issues must be aware that it is really tough to solve such
cases. Being transnational in nature, cyber law and cyber security
issues require international cooperation among various nations and
law enforcement agencies.

For instance, if a simple exercise of internet protocol tracking is
undertaken, it takes months before any information is received from a
foreign jurisdiction. Even in such cases, these are exceptional cases
and not a general practice. In this process, the crucial digital
evidence is lost forever and the cyber crimes investigation becomes a
cold trail.

As on date we have no
dedicated cyber
security laws in India. This is the reason why cyber
security is more ignored than complied with in India. Even the
blooming e-commerce industry of India is devoid
of required cyber security practices and requirements. Cyber security
of banks
in India is also not upto the mark. This has forced the Reserve Bank
of India to constitute a IT
subsidiary that would consider, monitor and prescribe
cyber security related rules, regulations and practices for banks in
India. Even the Companies Act 2013 has prescribed cyber
security obligations for the directors of companies. This
is in addition to the cyber
law obligations of banks and directors of Indian
companies.

It is well understood
that international
legal issues of cyber attacks are not easy to handle.
Nevertheless, Indian government cannot afford to ignore this
situation and it must urgently work towards making Indian cyber
security robust, resilent and effective. P4LO hopes that our readers
would find our blog on international legal issues of cyber attacks,
cyber law and cyber security useful.